Cultural Marxism And The Birth Of Modern Thought-Crime

If a person has no philosophical thoughts, certain questions will never cross
his mind. As a young man, there were many issues and ideas that never concerned
me as they do today. There is one question, however, which has intrigued me
for the longest time, and it still fascinates me as intensely as it did back
then: Does spirit precede matter or is it the other way around? In other words,
does human consciousness create what we perceive as our reality and physical
existence or vice versa; does the pre-existing material world determine our
sentience and shape our cognition? In essence, what really lies beneath the
surface of this question is the following: is man born as a conscious being
with a free will and self-determination or not?

Do not be alarmed; this is not an article on political philosophy. But it
is a fundamental existential issue that I found underpins many of the doubts
that I have regarding the functioning of our society and our political culture.
While I freely admit I am no philosopher or expert in the field, in this article
I will try to explain why the answer we choose to this crucial question, which
most people never consider, has an amazing impact on the way we think, the
way we live and act and the way society behaves as a whole. By diving deeper
into this debate, we uncover important insights that can help us understand
how our Western society and its cultural identity have vastly degenerated and
especially why family values have so dramatically deteriorated. A clearer understanding
of the historical evolution of this age-old question and its far-reaching implications
will provide valuable insights into the intellectual crisis of our Western
societies and the strategic suppression of dissent and of independent thought
and it will shed light on the origins on the intellectual bondage that we know
today as Political Correctness.

The Kantian heritage and the intellectual shackles of Nonage

I believe it makes sense to start our quest to settle this age-old question
by looking at the works of Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804), the German philosopher
who is considered the father of modern philosophy. In 1784 he wrote the following
about Enlightenment:

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage
is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance.
This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding
but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's
guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own
understanding," is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment."

Today's economic and political forces seem to be cognizant of the peril posed
by a free-thinking citizenry. As our western culture faces an existential crisis,
and suffers attacks from multiple fronts, the political elite appears to be
focused on enforcing its will at all costs. They are desperately trying to
keep a multitude of threats at bay, and failing to do so, they are content
with simply having the public accept their failure as a strategic victory:
the immigration crisis, chronic economic instability, geopolitical conflicts
with horrendous human costs, violations of personal liberties, they are all
to be taken as facts of life; this is sold to us as the new normal. Therefore,
their priority is to keep the body politic in check, to crush dissent and rebel-rousing.
To do so, laws against specific actions are not enough. To "keep the peace",
one needs to have laws against thought itself. By re-defining right and wrong,
controlling the narrative and limiting independent thought and free speech,
the public, as a whole, remains strategically malleable and intellectually
manageable.

Given the success of this strategy, and bearing in mind Kant's definition
of Enlightenment, it seems pertinent to raise the question: did we ever manage
to evolve into mature and enlightened individuals or are we still trapped in
our own self-imposed nonage? I believe the latter is the case; and to further
clarify my view, there is no better man to quote than Kant himself:

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind
gladly remains minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them
from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others
to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor.
If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience,
a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert
myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care
of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken
our supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority
of mankind--among them the entire fair sex--should consider the step to
maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians
make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures
from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have
fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them
if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not
very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk.
However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage
all further attempts."

The Frankfurt School and the origins of political correctness

What is becoming increasingly hard to deny, especially in Europe and the USA,
is that we no longer have the absolute and inalienable right to free speech.
Although we claim to be proud citizens of democratic societies that, in theory,
respect and uphold individual freedoms, in practice, the definition of what
constitutes free speech has grown so withered and so narrow, that it often
makes a mockery of the very principle itself. More and more topics have been
classified as "off limits", the public expression of the "wrong" personal opinions
and ideas has been criminalized and even academic or scientific research of
certain fields has been suppressed. But symptoms of our socially enforced self-censorship
are evident in everyday conversations as well: Is it not deeply unsettling
that it is next to impossible to have a normal, temperate debate about the
immigration crisis, which is an existential matter that will most likely shape
the future of the European continent? The natural rights to one's own independent
thinking and to free speech have been heavily curtailed under the guise of
what is now referred to as 'political correctness'. Speaking one's mind freely
can have them branded as a pariah and a direct threat to society, but the repercussions
do not end there: Self- censorship is also enforced through new laws implemented
by our moral leaders, who feel that the power vested in them through their
governmental offices extends to also placing limitations on what we can and
cannot think.

250 years ago, Kant stressed the need for public debate as follows:

"It is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage
which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like
it, and is at first incapable of using his own understanding because he
has never been permitted to exercise it. It is possible, however, for the
public to enlighten itself. Indeed, if it is only granted freedom, enlightenment
is almost inevitable. There will always be a few independent thinkers,
even among the self-appointed guardians of the multitude. Once such men
have thrown off the yoke of nonage, they will spread about them the spirit
of a reasonable appreciation of man's value and of his duty to think for
himself. It is especially to be noted that the public which was earlier
brought under the yoke by these men afterwards forces these very guardians
to remain in submission, if it is so incited by some of its guardians who
are themselves incapable of any enlightenment. That shows how pernicious
it is to implant prejudices: they will eventually revenge themselves upon
their authors or their authors' descendants. Therefore, a public can achieve
enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may bring about the end of a personal
despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform
of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as
guide lines for the unthinking multitude."

In short, without the freedom to debate openly, the individual has not the
means to escape his self-imposed nonage. Without the possibility to break free,
and to enlighten ourselves, we remain powerless to question, to object to and
to challenge the status quo. Like pieces on a chessboard, we have no say in
our own fates and no control over the stratagems that we implicitly help to
enforce. Silently complicit in devastating policies, in conflicts and in wars
being fought in our name, we simply become bystanders and look on as our culture
corrodes, our values degrade and our liberties are trampled upon. To understand
how the modern man became complicit in his own intellectual subjugation, we
have to go back and trace the roots of the crisis.

"Emancipation through indoctrination"

Free thought and free speech have always been intertwined and correlated.
The demise of both has its origins in the years between 1930 and 1968, when
a group of intellectuals and so-called philosophers came together to establish
a school of thought that was essentially focused on destroying Western civilization
and all that it stands for (including its economic system based on capitalism)
through 'emancipation'. Max Horkheimer, a Marxist philosopher, was one of the
founding fathers of the Frankfurt School, which embodied modern Critical Theory
and was to a great extent characterized as neo-Marxist. Horkheimer, along with
Jürgen Habermas, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, to
name but a few, formed the Frankfurt School and its Institute for Social Research,
an intellectual think-tank, that shaped the cultural understanding of the West
and Germany in particular. According to Horkheimer, critical theory would serve "to
liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Accordingly,
their main objective was to create the theoretical and ideological platform
for a cultural revolution. This group of "philosophers" sought to, and to a
great extent, succeeded in achieving their objective by focusing specifically
on culture. It is culture that forms the foundation that shapes peoples' mindsets
and political outlook by controlling the language and ideas through institutional
channels, particularly education. In short, Critical Theory is the politicization
of logic. Horkheimer stated that "logic is not irrespective of content," by
which he practically meant that an argument is logical if it aims to destroy
Western civilization and it is illogical if it supports it. This is, of course,
the cornerstone of "political correctness" and why open and unrestrained debate
is frowned upon as subversive and inflammatory. It breeds dissent and doubt,
it encourages critical analysis and it prevents intellectual uniformity and
group-think.

Critical Theory and the war on God

The Frankfurt School claimed that its Critical Theory is the theory of truth.
The occidental philosophy, from St. Thomas Aquinas to Kant, as well as Hegel,
Fichte, Schelling and Goethe, should therefore be summarily dismissed and replaced
by their own dogmatic set of rules and guidelines for "thinking right". Critical
Theory in sociology and political philosophy went beyond interpretation and
understanding of society, it sought to overcome and destroy all barriers that,
in their view, entrapped society in systems of domination, oppression and dependency.

A principal yet controversial argument concerns their animosity towards religion
and spirituality. According to the Frankfurt School, Christianity is the institutional
revival of pagan philosophy and God is mere fiction. Religion led people to
project their suffering to a divine entity, it served as a distraction from
the misery caused by capitalism and in its core lies nothing but pure imagination.
As the theories of Darwinism and Freudianism challenged the status of religion,
accordingly, Marxism and Neo-Marxism dispelled the unenlightened mythical image
of the age-old institutionalized divinity: Not God, but Man is the highest
entity. Since it is not my purpose to discuss theology, but to demonstrate
the mindset of the members of this school of thought, once again, I will refer
to a quote by Immanuel Kant, who wrote the following in Critique of Pure Reason:

"Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider
questions, which it cannot evade, as they are presented by its own nature,
but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind."

Kant was known as a fierce critic of the practice of religion, but he recognized
that cognition and rationalization are indicative of the human mind and spirit,
and are the means by which the individual arrives to the conclusion that there
is a God. The significance of this argument lies in Kant's belief in the free
will and determination of the human mind to develop this process of rationalization
in order to arrive to the conclusion that man is essentially good. In this
context, God is more of a metaphor for morality and this plays a decisive role
in the fundamental spirit versus matter question: Man's mind and spirit precedes
matter. Essentially, Kant reconciled these two concepts in a way that highlights
human consciousness and self- determination.

The Frankfurt School positioned its ideology at the opposite end of the spectrum.
It professed that man is limited in his existence as a mammal and as a product
of nature that is driven by basic needs. There is no room for free will, no
capacity for critical judgment or ability to distinguish right from wrong,
no awareness, and no rationalization. This position has its roots in their
Marxist background, which argues that man is a product of society: his mind
and spirit are determined and shaped by the material world. Because of this
vulnerability to external factors, the human mind is thought of as frail and
manipulable and therefore man cannot be held accountable for his own decisions.
This idea served as the basis for the "de-criminalization of crime" thesis
of the Frankfurt School. As per Habermas, because man is a product of society,
it is inevitable that he adaptively yields to his criminal tendencies, since
he is raised under the yoke of structural violence of a criminal capitalist
system.

The Frankfurt School believed that by stripping humanity of spirituality and
by destroying the material surroundings created by the capitalist system and
its structure, man will live free, without the feeling of responsibility and
without the burden of conscience. They promised freedom, without free will,
they envisioned emancipation, through intellectual assimilation and they guaranteed
fairness, without justice.

The strategic importance of public education

According to the Frankfurt School, the system's malfunction starts with the
family. The family is the first and primary moral entity that we encounter.
This entity raises children in an authoritarian manner that creates submissive,
obedient and dependent adults. In other words, it is the family that primes
and programs us for fascism. Thus, by discrediting and destroying the family
as a concept, one can nip capitalism and fascism in the bud. With this antagonistic
attitude towards the family unit in society, combined with their ideological
crusade against spirituality, the Frankfurt philosophers needed to put forward
an alternative, to replace the old ways with their own roadmap for the future.
In their view, the answer was simply to reprogram and reengineer society so
that everyone behaves as is expected by others and so that human behavior becomes
an act of reciprocity. This alone would be the universal code of ethics governing
their utopia.. To instill and to enforce this code in society, they proposed
the use of institutions, and most importantly, education. Commandeering these
institutional channels, would be the most efficient way to impose and to promote
their ethics, with education providing the key to assured compliance, weeding
out dissent and any potential for future independent thinking by the individual.

The repercussions of this strategy are obvious in today's society. Public
education has conditioned us since childhood not to question the government
and its collectivist policies. Maybe you remember one of our latest articles
about the origins of the public education system, in which we introduced you
to Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology (and his proponents
John Dewey and Edward Thorndike in the U.S.), the scientist who shaped today's
state education approach. He based his methodology on the following assumption: "Man
is devoid of spirit and self-determinism". He then set out to prove that "man
is the summation of his experience, of the stimuli which intrude upon his consciousness
and unconsciousness." The great H. L. Mencken wrote in 1924 that the aim
of public education is not: "[...] to fill the young of the species with
knowledge and awaken their intelligence... Nothing could be further from the
truth. The aim... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the
same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent
and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim
everywhere else."

The rise of Cultural Marxism

The Frankfurt School developed the dogma that "freedom and justice" are dialectic
terms, meaning that they stand in opposition to each other, in a zero-sum game,
where "more freedom equals less justice" will be the consequence and "more
justice equals less freedom" is the outcome. Based on this dialectic, freedom
stood as the thesis, and justice reflected the anti-thesis.

This rather interesting dialectic approach, was adopted from the ideas and
works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Frankfurt School, however, twisted
the core of the concept and denatured its consequential logicality. In short,
the main difference between Hegel and Horkheimer's dialectic approach lies
in the conclusion: Hegel, an idealist, believed like Kant that spirit creates
matter, while for Horkheimer, a disciple of Karl Marx and his theory of materialism,
the opposite was the case. Marx postulated that the world, the objective reality,
can be explained by its material existence and its development and not from
the realization of a divine absolute idea or as a result of rational human
thought, as adopted in idealism. Therefore, putting limits on the material
world, placing external rules and guidelines on the environment within which
individuals live, think and operate, should, in their view, suffice to shape
their cognitive experience and confine their spirit to the "desired" parameters.

I believe this is the key point that links the Frankfurt school of thought
to what we know today as "political correctness". At its core, we find this
familiar false belief that less freedom guarantees more justice, and therefore
more security. This mantra is regurgitated through institutional and political
messaging, instilled in social values and planted in the minds of the younger
generation and future voters, though the educational channel, just like the
Frankfurt School intended. Instead of creating the platform to encourage individual
human development, by reasoning, raising questions and stimulating dialogue,
the institutional system works as an assembly line, from cradle to grave, and
it successfully standardizes individuals and primes them to submit to the status
quo, to accept and not to question. This is the logic of Critical Theory and
the core element of "political correctness". It is a vain and doomed attempt
to control the inherent entropy of human ideas and independent thinking, to
force the flux of our intertwined and unique experiences to an unnatural stasis
and ultimately, to break Man's spirit and to bring his mind to heel.

Now you can maybe understand what Tom DiLorenzo meant in one of our latest
interviews about "cultural Marxism", when he said: "They largely abandoned
the old "class struggle" rhetoric involving the capitalist and worker "classes" and
replaced them with an oppressor and an oppressed class. The oppressed include
women, minorities, LGBT, and several other mascot categories. The oppressor
class consists of white heterosexual males who are not ideological Marxists
like them." When the members of the Frankfurt School were forced to leave Germany
during Nazi rule, they moved to the USA, near Hollywood, and they established
strong ties with Columbia University and Harvard. This is how they spread their
influence in the United States and aside from Hollywood, they also turned the
academic elite at most universities into reservoirs of "cultural Marxism".
Here in Europe, some of the most prominent names in politics today were among
the 1968 rebel students who were mentored by the first generations of the Frankfurt
School. These include former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his
Minister of Defense Joschka Fischer, current Vice-President of the German Bundestag,
Ulla Schmidt, and last but not least Chancellor Angela Merkel. On the anniversary
of "60 years Christian-Democratic-Union (CDU)" on June 16th, 2005 in Berlin,
she explained how many changes in society which were triggered in 1968 have
shaped the old German Republic and continue to influence the CDU to this day.
As she put it: "We don't want to return to the family concept, to the 1950s
image of a woman and we don't want to return to the sociopolitical frame of
that time. We as women must march through the institutions und take our place
in the key power positions in the leadership of this country".

My understanding of cultural Marxism is that it has nothing to do with freedom,
or with cultural enlightenment and social progress. Instead, as Horkheimer
himself put it, it is all about the creation of identical individuals who do
not come together and exchange ideas, as they operate like mindless machines.
The Frankfurt School and its followers have therefore clearly proved to be
the enemies of freedom and the conscious human mind.

In conclusion, let me yield the closing words to Immanuel Kant, who wrote, " A
large degree of civic freedom appears to be of advantage to the intellectual
freedom of the people, yet at the same time it establishes insurmountable
barriers. A lesser degree of civic freedom, however, creates room to let
that free spirit expand to the limits of its capacity. Nature, then, has
carefully cultivated the seed within the hard core--namely the urge for and
the vocation of free thought. And this free thought gradually reacts back
on the modes of thought of the people, and men become more and more capable
of acting in freedom. At last free thought acts even on the fundamentals
of government and the state finds it agreeable to treat man, who is now more
than a machine, in accord with his dignity."

Claudio Grass is a passionate advocate of free-market thinking and libertarian
philosophy. Following the teachings of the Austrian School of Economics he
is convinced that sound money and human freedom are inextricably linked to
each other.

In his function as Managing Director at Global Gold in Switzerland he is able
to combine his passion with his work.Global Gold offers private and institutional
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